David Nordel

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back everyone to the Tron podcast. This is your host, Rashad Woods. Today I have a very special guest who served his country, is now an entrepreneur, helps veterans, author, a speaker, leadership council, wonderful individual all overall, former commander, master sergeant in the Air Force 30 years, Mr. David Nordell. Thank you so much, sir. Appreciate you. [00:00:20] Speaker B: What's up, Rashad? [00:00:21] Speaker A: It's good, good to have you. And you have a fascinating background, first of all. And like I said, I always say this to everybody. I always like to tell your story. It's not my job. How does a 19 year old from a farming community decide that they want to join the air? How does that. [00:00:33] Speaker B: It started way before 19. Listen, I had some, I had some and I've been talking, I've been speaking a little bit informally about this because, you know, we're getting ready nationally. We're going to go through a transition. Just it's going to happen. I don't care what side you are on politics, I don't care, whatever. What's going on right now is going to be change. And some people are going to hate it. Some people are going to love it. Some people that hate it will love it. Some people loved it, will hate it. It's all good. But one of the things that excites me is that there's a little bit of a different conversation happening. I was always geared to serve. And you know, ironically, from that little town that I came from, there's a guy that was a year behind me in high school that actually lives in Billings now with me and he's a professor. And we got to sit down and talk. And I said, kurt, how did we end up being who we are and leading the way we lead and serving, you know, serving people and those type of things. And he said, Dave, he said, because from the time we were born until we went out into the world, it was never about us. The cows, the animals were always ate. First you always fed the animals, then you fed yourself, right? So I was surrounded, though, early on by some tremendous World War II veterans. I had an uncle and I had two teachers that were really influential right down to when we said the Pledge of Allegiance. We just didn't say it and sit down. He would pick that apart and talk about what that meant and, you know, those type of things. So I wanted to serve. And so even, even younger than that, all I wanted to do, Rashad, was I want to go in the Navy. I want to be a plumber. That was it. [00:01:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that. And I saw that. Right? [00:01:59] Speaker B: That's all I wanted, the Nate. And this is all about attitude, right? [00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:02:03] Speaker B: The day that all the recruiters were at the high school and I was standing there, and I went up to the Navy recruiter, and he's in that cool uniform that I love so much, I used to get up in the middle of the night and watch World War II Navy movies. And the guy was absolute not good. It was a bad. It was a bad. Maybe he was having a bad day. I have no idea. But whatever. He didn't have the time for me. And a guy named Master Sergeant John Dees from the United States Air Force put his arm around me. He said, I might have an opportunity for you. And those. Those guys compete no matter what. Yeah. And the next thing you know, I'm off to the Air Force telling them, I want to be a plumber. They both have plumbers. And the Air Force said, no, you're going to go into medicine. Which was the exact right thing. They knew better what I needed to be doing. I had no idea what I was going to do. I just wanted to put the uniform on. I wanted to serve. I didn't know if I was going to do four years or 40. And, you know, once. Once you get in it and you're in it to win it, then you start to serve and. And. And you put your head down and goes. You know, that's looking back. Looking back. I wouldn't trade any of it. The farm lessons and a lot of things that I lived. I feel like the first book talks about directly correlate to leading people all the way through combat and all that. So. Yeah. [00:03:09] Speaker A: Well, it's crazy because you. I saw, you know, one of your interviews, you're like, I lived on every single continent except Alaska, which for obvious reasons, Alaska's not happening to, you know, Antarctica. [00:03:18] Speaker B: Right, right. Right now. [00:03:19] Speaker A: I mean, excuse me. Antarctica. Like, dummy. Right, yeah, Antarctica. Sorry. Like, sorry, Apologize to all the Alaskans. [00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah. You're not a continent. That's okay. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah, Right, right, right. So. Yeah. So what was fascinating. So you. Your perspective on serving and seeing the world was shaped, you know, by every place that you went. What was it like traveling the world as a young man and even later on as you grew older and the experiences that you saw in the places that you were in. [00:03:44] Speaker B: So let me. Let me give you some context. The Lord Jesus Christ probably gave that I didn't know I had. When you come out of what I call a brown community, I grew up with, with migrant workers and the Portuguese community, that I grew up in. You leave that community with a lot of ignorance. You don't. There's a lot you don't know. There's a lot you don't know. And when you go into. Into an institution like the United States Military, it is melted. It is uber melted. I struggled with that, man. My. My family sent me out the door with language, vernacular, things that I thought were absolutely hilarious. Jokes. I had jokes. No, no, these are. These are not jokes that you tell in a barracks. Because. Because. Because maybe half the barracks might think they're funny, the other half of the barracks might want to have a different type of conversation. [00:04:28] Speaker A: I can only imagine. [00:04:29] Speaker B: And so you gotta. And. And so. And so I hit all those tripwires, brother. I hit them all. And. And. And my inherent nature, probably because of, you know, medicine drives it. My inherent nature is. I mean, I like people. I respect people, but I didn't realize. I didn't realize the. The kind of. I got kind of got set up by my closed. My closed bubble, the society I was living in, no matter how. And so when I got out there and I was kicking it around in the world, I was uncomfortable all the time. You're uncomfortable in the Middle east, you're uncomfortable in Asia. You're. You're uncomfortable in rooms with people that you serve with because you're not the same color, you're not the same gender. You didn't come from Rhode island, whatever the hell it is. [00:05:07] Speaker A: I hate to interrupt. I can only imagine. Even the same food, right? Like, even. [00:05:12] Speaker B: Dude, I thought grits. I thought grits were cream of wheat the first time I put a mouthful of grits. I'm telling you, bro. And I love grits now. I love grits, But I. I got. I got some. I got some grits. I put some sugar and that sugar on there, and I. And I'm like, what in the hell is this? And, you know, the guy next to me is like, dude, those are grits, man. Need to be putting butter and salt and pepper. So, yes, I. So absolutely. And at my own expense, somebody gets a big laugh out of it and vice versa, right? So it's. Yeah, 100. [00:05:46] Speaker A: 100. [00:05:47] Speaker B: So I love it. Yeah. And. And. And so that makes you really uncomfortable. [00:05:52] Speaker A: For sure. For sure. [00:05:53] Speaker B: And, you know. And you know, Rashad, this is societal, man. This is just leadership stuff. You have a choice to make from the time that you walk out into the world. I'm talking about the time that you. You go on, join your first Little League team or you're in whatever club or whatever you're doing, and you get mixed and match. You know, my, my boys were raised military brats and they have so many blind spots in a great way. They just navigate, man. They throw them in a room and they're just. They got 10 friends in 10 minutes. And people are like, you know, how did you know that guy? Well, I don't, you know, I just, I know how to do this. Well, we all don't know how to do that. So I got out there and for some reason, like I said, a God given inherent thing, I just told myself, if I'm not making myself uncomfortable and asking questions, hard questions, scary questions, not asking questions like, what the hell are grits? Where did they come from? Collard greens, man. Collard greens. And I, I was just telling somebody the other day they were going to South Carolina. I said, okay, I said, here's the barbecue place. Mac and cheese, collard greens. If you don't eat those, you suck. So, so. And they're like, what? And I'm like, hey, listen, I didn't know any of that. I didn't know that whole thing, but I do now, you know, so food. And food is a great equalizer, right? [00:07:01] Speaker A: Well, that's what I said. What a great end that is to somebody, though, if you can't, the idea that you could actually, even if you don't love it, if you can just talk about it, have an experience with it. Obviously my comparison pales to yours, but when you have a commonality with food, conversation and opening up can start to take place and bridge differences between people, which is a great lifestyle, from leadership. [00:07:21] Speaker B: But, but think about how you grow, because as a leader, you're going to get all different sizes, shapes, everything, you know, and you've got it. You've got to take all of that on 100. And if you early on are making yourself uncomfortable, these conversations, like, I'll tell you, my first thing that I really had to get over was urban life. Had no understanding of it. You know, how that shapes right. Where I came from. I wasn't a minority, so I didn't know what to know what that felt like. So I had to get a perspective on that. Well, roll the clock forward. And Now I've got 10,500, however many people I'm leading, right? And they're from all different walks of life. And somebody walks into my office and they say, I have this issue. And the issue may be based off their cultural imbalance of where they're at, their environment for sure. [00:08:07] Speaker A: For sure. [00:08:08] Speaker B: If I hadn't done the work ahead of time, I couldn't have built any level of empathy that gave me the ability to find the resources that they need. And sometimes you can't be the resource, but you better have a network. You better have a network, and you better have built a foundation where you can say, I'm not your guy, but this gal is your galaxy. And I did a lot of that. And so I'm so thankful of being able to just be immersed and. [00:08:31] Speaker A: And that's really big of somebody to be able to notice that right away or once they have enough depth inside of a conversation to say, you know what? I'm not the best subject matter expert for this, but I built a relationship with somebody who is, or this is immediately who you need to speak with, because it did. You didn't brush that person off, but you also didn't lead them on to a path that you really couldn't answer what they were dealing with. [00:08:51] Speaker B: And, you know, a lot of leaders, I'll tell you, it's Dave Nordell's opinion that we've probably missed two generations of deliberate development of leaders. We've built hyper managers and we've missed this piece. But a lot of leaders feel that it's weakness to admit that they can't handle the issue that they're handing it. And I have never, never met a leader that can navigate all of it, ever. [00:09:13] Speaker A: Because. Right, because you're probably. Because there's a big difference between a process and people. Right. And so, you know, and I know I wanted to segue right into your consulting firm, which I thought, in addition to obviously helping people who are veterans, you know, which is absolutely wonderful cause. Because I want every veteran to get as much assistance as they can for serving our country and going through the things that person, man, woman, has been going through. But you also discuss leadership styles, and you've done very successful in your consulting business, and I'd love to dive into that with you. [00:09:41] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, I'll tell you, I just, I did a. I did a solo podcast. You know, I have to. [00:09:45] Speaker A: I have. [00:09:45] Speaker B: I have the Kangaroo leadership podcast and. [00:09:47] Speaker A: I have people like you on. [00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah, And I have people like you on. And maybe I'll. Maybe I'll reciprocate. Maybe we'll just. I'll flip. Oh, that'd be great. I'll flip the tables on you. It's a lot. That's a lot of fun, actually. But I just before we got on here, I recorded a 30 minute spot on Courage and Organizational courage and taking the step forward. And I'll tell you, you know, you use the word successful, and I guess that I. I guess most people would say success means your bank account's big, the money's rolling in. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Right. [00:10:14] Speaker B: Some people would say suss is dropping. You know, dropping 30 points in a. In a basketball game, whatever that is. Right. Because we gauge it off numbers, right? [00:10:22] Speaker A: Correct. It's measurable. It's immediately measurable. [00:10:25] Speaker B: It's win, loss. It's win, loss. And then. And then it's measurable. [00:10:29] Speaker A: Something so simple as losing weight. Right? I went from this weight to this weight, right? [00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. But is it. Is it about volume or is it about impact? So you can be highly successful in one area doing one thing with one person and have a bigger impact than trying to run across the things. So here's what I'll tell you with these leadership. I just did a thing on courage, because what I find is that when things are. When you don't know. We've talked a little bit about this. When you don't know about something and you don't understand it, and that drives a little bit of fear and a little bit of pain or a lot of fear and a lot of pain. Question we as humans, our first reaction is to work to. Now I'll use a German shepherd as an example, because I have a German shepherd in my life. It's not my dog, but it might as well be. And she's with me an awful lot. If I'm walking her, there are certain people that will see me at 200 yards and go across the street because I have a German shepherd. [00:11:22] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:11:22] Speaker B: Because. Because they think they have a. They have a perception of German shepherds, right? [00:11:27] Speaker A: Yes, they do. [00:11:29] Speaker B: I have other people that will come up to me and say, I have this big fear of lock. Large dogs. Is there. Is she okay to pet? In which she is. So they get to work on that. That's. That's a good thing. And then I have other people that, you know, are overly aggressive and they want to, you know, touch her too much, and that, you know, that's a. That's a thing. But that's. But that's society, right. And so when you walk in and you say, here's the veteran experience. Here's kind of what we need. Here's some phenomenon. And I. And I have a whole drill that I go through of perception on both ends. And then. And then it really identifies the gap between what people think of veterans and where veterans are in their trans and that dry and that drives emotion. What I'm finding, Rashad, which is probably the biggest leadership challenge. What I'm finding is, is that this veteran phenomenon drives more people to know than it does to. Yes. So it's an extra step. It's easier to sell if you can just get a couple people to chew it and tell somebody else that it tastes good. This is different. It's not a product. It's a culture. [00:12:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:31] Speaker B: It's. It's a societal shift. It's a societal mindset. And we should never have anybod veterans committing suicide in any day. We should never have any homeless veterans. And when veterans come out, employers should have a full understanding of what some of their challenges are, but also all of the good stuff that we bring and how to leverage that. [00:12:49] Speaker A: So I. So a question I have if is. And this is just. I've known people in the military, but I've never served. And this is just. Just a question I have openly. Obviously, the discipline that somebody would get in the military is a lot. A lot more significant life and death, as opposed to everyday life of somebody not in it. When you're leading civilians, how do you cope with people who. I'm trying to. Try to word this correctly, for lack of a better term, BS you. When that wouldn't work in the military. Like, how does. How does that. What's the expectation in the difference level with dealing with the civilian versus the military situation? [00:13:22] Speaker B: We tend to screw that up sometimes. [00:13:24] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:25] Speaker B: Because. Yeah, yeah. And this is. This is all about the adapt. So to set the stage for the phenomenon. The phenomenon isn't. When you're a veteran, you're like a hot dog, right? You take a hot dog, you put it in the microwave. Right. You put the hot dog in the microwave, Right. [00:13:40] Speaker A: Once you. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Once you hit the button, you've changed the DNA of the hot dog. I don't care if it looks the same. It's forever. It's forever changed. When you raise your hand, go to basic training and go through the indoctrination. When you're indoctrinated. Listen to these words. When you're indoctrinated and then you're institutionalized. Listen these words. Because these words sound almost like going to prison, don't they? Because there's. [00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds like. Right. It really does. Rick. Josh Hanks, in my mind. [00:14:06] Speaker B: And we do. We do. Yes. Well, that's it, actually. If you've seen Shawshank Redemption, I use that as an example. Have you seen Shawshank Redemption? You see how and they show you the different. Everybody transitions differently. Everybody does it differently. Right, Right to the point where some people commit suicide because they just can't do it. A lot of, a lot of recidivism is because they've been institutionalized so long that they just go commit a crime so they can go back in because that's all they know. [00:14:31] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:14:32] Speaker B: So, so the phenomenon is the exact same. So now you come out and, and say you were leading 12, 15 guys, 50 guys in combat, and you did things like today we're going to do, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's absolutely lined out, right. When somebody's not toeing the line, you kind of get in their grill a little bit, tell them what the consequences are going to be. In some cases they end up doing push ups or whatever. They look at your rank, you outrank them and by, and by law they have to follow your orders unless there's some crazy, crazy thing and they do it right. Try that with a bunch of civilians. Yeah, what if I walked, what if I walked into some area and I said, I said front leaning rest position, which is push ups. Give me 10. You know what, you know what they'd say? First of all, they'd laugh at me. Second of all, they'd ask if I was serious. If I did, if I did get really serious and say, yes, I'm serious, they would pick their stuff up off their desk, go to HR and they wouldn't have a problem. I would have a problem. That's just the way it would be. Because that's not how you, that's not how you do it. Right? So you can't, you can't, Yelcon, you just can't. It's the whole different thing that you have to do. Everybody thinks that that's how veterans, that's what veterans do. They just yell at people and bark orders and do that type stuff. And that is so far from the truth because we are overdeveloped in leadership. We, we're overdeveloped. All this culture stuff that I've talked about, navigating, just, you know, the nuances of different value sets and those type of things, navigating, all of that. And that's why the services have values, so that we can rally around one set of values. Doesn't matter where you came from. But we screw this up and we go into organizations and we say things like, you know, I've done that before. That's not too difficult. Here's the checklist, let's move out. And people are like who's this guy or who's this gal? Or what do they know? Are they trying to take my job? And then we overwork ourselves, you know, then we, then we overwork ourselves, we look and we go, oh, well, you know, I should probably stay late. So then you stay late. Well, in the military that's, that's like, good job, you know, we got the mission done, we need to get it done. In the civilian world, it's like you're showing off or I'm not paying you overtime or if you're gonna, if you're gonna work extra hours, then hire another person because we don't want you to do those kind of things. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Correct, Correct. [00:16:40] Speaker B: On the flip side, when somebody says a meeting starts at noon and it's gonna end at 1:00 and everybody comes in late and the meeting goes till 1:30, well then every then everybody's undisciplined savages and they should have some sort of paperwork or discipline action. Right? And it's just, that's the way they operate because, because they schedule things, all of it. So do you see, do you see where, where veteran can get into? 50% of veterans are gone out of their jobs in their first year because. [00:17:07] Speaker A: Of the structure and the differences and the cultural differences. Right? Yeah. [00:17:11] Speaker B: It doesn't fit. [00:17:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:17:13] Speaker B: And we're made to be critical thinkers, think asymmetrically, solve problems, complete missions, take care of your battle buddy to the right, your battle buddy to the left. We want to ride for the, we want to ride for the brand. We got to have something, something on us. Right. We want to be, you know, and, and we, and we cherish our values and we want leaders that three dimensionalize the value. So don't scream at everybody on the shop floor because they don't have steel toed boots on when they're dressed like me in shorts and flip flops. Doesn't work. [00:17:40] Speaker A: Right. And you know, and you know, on the flip side of that, you know, the, you know, and this isn't dismissing anybody's profession, that coffee that didn't have cream in it for that customer isn't anywhere close to the life and death situation that you were dealing with on. [00:17:52] Speaker B: A day, our baseline reality. Hey, I have said out loud, probably inappropriately only because as a medic, when you're, when you, when you've been to a combat zone, I have said out loud more than once in situations that had people really stressed out, I've said out loud, I don't see anybody zipping body bags closed this is not that. [00:18:13] Speaker A: Big a deal, right? [00:18:14] Speaker B: To them. To them, this is their body bag moment. To me, it's a nothing burger. So that really kind of makes me. That kind of really makes me the ass. [00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Talk about compartmentalizing right now, right? Talk about compartmentalizing. You know, even when you say that right now, like, you know, I'll never forget, you know, one of. And this is, I graduated from high school in 2001, and obviously nine, 11 happened in oh, one. And so some, some friends of mine joined the army. And I remember when, you know, he got. I'm text. I'm messaging him over like AOL messenger, one of those messaging apps. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:18:47] Speaker A: And he's like, I'm like, you know, hey, you know, you know, I don't want to, you know, hate my friend. I don't want to put his name out there if he doesn't want it. He's like, I'm in Baghdad. And you're like, you're doing one of these. You like, here I am in my dorm room going to class, right, at 20. And he's like, yeah, I'm in bad. Like, he put it in big, bold letters too. And like everything that was going bad at that moment or in that week went away, like, immediately. Right now, he's home safe. And, you know, I've talked to him a couple times. Never about that. You know, I didn't want to get into that. But the point being is that that will take you to a level of it ain't that bad. It ain't anywhere close that bad. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Right? [00:19:22] Speaker A: And kudos to him for what, you know, he served honorably. But yeah, like, what you just said made perfect sense. And that's exactly what I thought of immediately. [00:19:30] Speaker B: Let me, let me give you some perspective, especially as Americans. And this is a non military perspective. This is just a perspective of somebody that's led and probably made all the, all the mistakes that a leader can make. And along the way, I've had some home runs when Covid started around the globe, right? And we, and we, and we were spectators in the United States for a while, right? We watched the kind of. We watched it go through Asia. We really watched it really ravaged those types of things. And we were ramping up while people were out there fighting over water and protective gear, we were fighting over toilet. [00:20:03] Speaker A: Yeah, right. 100%. 100%. [00:20:06] Speaker B: So when we think our situation is poor, you need to pull back off it. One of your first questions was 19 years old. And then you go out into the world when I was in Somalia in 93, so the black Hawk Downtime. Think about my perspective on what's bad. And I saw things there in East Africa that you can't replicate in America because nobody's that low. You can go to the homeless of the homeless, and they are not in as bad a shape as some of those people. And the happiest people that I've ever met in my life are the ones that are starving. And heaven, they got the biggest smiles on their face, and they're the happiest and the most loving, and they just appreciate everything for just what it is, just the ability to breathe. And we become we this land of abundance and everything that we have, and. [00:20:48] Speaker A: We'Re miserable, you know, and so only somebody who's been other places and seen other people's conditions has, you know, such a unique perspective on something like that. The Internet doesn't do it justice. [00:20:57] Speaker B: And the less. The lesson in there, Rashad, is go travel. The lesson is in there isn't Dave's better than you because he's done stuff. The lesson in there is. Is challenge yourself. Have the courage to say, yes, I can go here. And you don't. You know what? You don't need to go from Billings, Montana, to Johannesburg, Africa. You need to go from Billings, Montana, to Providence, Rhode Island. [00:21:19] Speaker A: Right, Right. [00:21:20] Speaker B: Just do that. [00:21:21] Speaker A: Right. [00:21:21] Speaker B: And that'll change your. [00:21:22] Speaker A: Change your perspective, no question. And, you know, and I know that this. That, you know, you have a lot of expertise in, but I did want to transition a bit about your books, you know, because, you know, you're. You're an accomplished author as well, too, as well as a speaker. I saw a couple of the presentation, I mean, the questions you were asked about your book when you were at that library, and I thought that was great. So can you give us a little bit of details about the books you wrote? Yeah, well, the first cows go to sleep, you know. [00:21:46] Speaker B: Yeah. When the cows. Yeah, when the cows lay down. That's, you know, the first one was never intended to write a book. Had an English teacher that told me I should go in the military because I'd never make it in college. [00:21:56] Speaker A: Okay. [00:21:57] Speaker B: I won that bet, by the way. Got. Got challenged to write a book because I'm a storyteller, you know, and when I speak, I storyteller. And. And so, you know, I took on a good challenge, but really, with the first book, really wanted. What I wanted to do was just these things that we're talking about, just really dump it all into a book. So it's giving back life and leadership from the farm to the combat zone and beyond. And it's, it really is more about Dave's failures and trials and tribulations through life and my military time and then some, you know, some things to make you introspective. So maybe that, you know, maybe it'll help you out in a moment of need. Because nothing is really novel. You know, everybody, you could give me your worst experience. And I would say that's not, you're not the first person so. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Correct. [00:22:44] Speaker B: And so when we keep that perspective, we can work through things because somebody has traveled that path previously. When the cows lie down. Which is, which is that guy? [00:22:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. [00:22:57] Speaker B: When the cows lie down goes back to the farm, obviously. Right. When you're on a farm and scientists will say it's not scientifically proven, I'll say, you better pay attention. When you're on the farm and all the cows are lying down, usually around some spindly little tree, there's probably a significant weather phenomenon that's coming. [00:23:13] Speaker A: Oh, geez. [00:23:14] Speaker B: And, and so if you pay attention to that, you might be able to put tractors inside, cover up a. Do those things so that you don't have, you don't have, you know, appreciable loss based on the weather phenomena. And you should. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:23:25] Speaker B: And I, and I write about my experience up in Canada, the most recent time that that had happened. I write about my experience with it. But I, but, but it's really metaphorical for the cows in our life, the cows in our relationships, the cows in our family, the cows at work, all of these kind of things that we just walk by and we miss them. And then we have the weather phenomenon. We have some appreciable loss. Figurative or literal. We have some appreciable loss. We do, we do a root cause analysis on it. And somebody goes, man, if we would have noticed that, we wouldn't have had any of this. And those are the cows lying down. And you know that that goes to mental health and our. And you know how we interact with people. And because the cows are subtle signs and they're everywhere around us, but we get going so doggone fast. And so the subtitle to that book is why People Quit you their leader. And a lot of times the cows lying down are your people and they're giving you subtle signs and you don't notice that until they've left you or worse. [00:24:21] Speaker A: Well, you know, it's, it's, you know, the best perspective I can have on that is I've done martial Arts. Right. And so if you don't have a, you know, I have a black belt in one style and I have a brown belt, another style. And I've taken multiple different styles of martial arts. And you can tell when somebody's ready to quit on the instructor, like in this, you know, like all of a sudden they've lost their students and they may not know that that was coming. You're like, you just don't. And I've been in various different schools. This isn't a shot at any instructor. But you can. If you can't read the room of what's about to happen next, you'll, next thing you know, you'll see, you know, a class and you'll be like, dang, you know, nobody's here. [00:24:54] Speaker B: And then you, you hear it most probably in the NFL and you'll lay. [00:25:01] Speaker A: Down on the coach. [00:25:03] Speaker B: You'll hear them say, the coach has lost the locker room. [00:25:05] Speaker A: Right, right, right. Yeah. [00:25:07] Speaker B: And usually the last person that knows the coach. Yeah, the last person knows. Yeah. The guy watching the game from 2,000 miles away knows the coaches lost the locker room and he has no clue. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's funny because, you know when you're watching on tv, you have replay, right? You have like, you can see when they'll be like, yeah, that cornerback didn't exactly get, you know, didn't, didn't give his 110 effort. And you'd be like, the coach can't even see that that guy just laid down. Yeah, that's a great analysis. So what about your motivational speaking? I know we're obviously, and I'm very cognizant of your time and schedule. You know, number one, where can we find David Nordell? And number two, how, how. What's the depth and breadth of your speaking that you, that you do? [00:25:44] Speaker B: Hey, listen, I love doing motivational stuff. I love coming in and just kind of firing up the room. Room. And, you know, I've got, I've got a few things I talk about and, and I talk about MaxFab, which is, you know, that's the way to get a hold of me is www.maxfabconsulting.com. that's M A X F A B consulting.com. if you do that, everything's. The blogs are there, the podcasts are there, the books are there. You can read more about me, but there's also a button to click and you can chit chat with me for up to 45 minutes if you want. Doing this totally free. You know, if you want to carry on a coaching relationship after that, that's great. If you want to have me come out and talk for an hour, that's great. If you think I'm. If you think I'm a madman and I'm nuts, that's great too, because. Because it's the world, man. And so, you know, not everybody's gonna love, you know, love the flavor of Dave. But, you know, the speaking is. Is really geared, or most of my speaking is really geared around driving interest. [00:26:34] Speaker A: Right. [00:26:35] Speaker B: I want people to think. I don't want to tell people things. You know, when you're, when you're telling people things, they tend to shut down a little bit. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Of course they do. Of course they. [00:26:43] Speaker B: But if, you know, I'm a storyteller, and if, if you, if you come to one of my talks, you're going to get a story. And the max fab story is, is all about organizational attitude. And, and the one thing that you control every day, no matter what, is your attitude. And if you have the right one with the right, you know, with the right, the right tempo, you can work through things. If you're a martial arts person, you know that the best you've been at martial arts is when you're at attitude and head in the right space. And the worst you've been. Is when you've been distracted. [00:27:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:27:11] Speaker B: And especially, Especially if you're distracted and you're mad or upset at something, you. [00:27:16] Speaker A: Know, you feel like, I'll tell, I'll tell you this too, is that if this relates to your leadership style, if you're in there and you're sparring and you aren't prepared against somebody who was. Who you are and aren't will be revealed very, very, very quickly. [00:27:29] Speaker B: Yeah, there's no, you know, you know, sometimes kids will call in fake bomb threats to school because there's a test. [00:27:35] Speaker A: You know why they're not prepared? [00:27:37] Speaker B: They didn't study. [00:27:38] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:27:39] Speaker B: Nobody, Nobody in life ever had anxiety. Nobody said, oh, I'm. I. I'm not. I don't want to take this test. If you've studied your butt off, you want to test. You want it? Yeah. Yeah. And you want it. You can't. You're like, give me the test. I'm ready to go. Nobody has ever. Nobody. So when people wander around and they've got this lack of confidence, they got their heads down and those type of things, it's because you haven't done desperate measures. [00:28:00] Speaker A: Time. Yeah. They start pulling desperate measures and doing very, very dumb things. [00:28:03] Speaker B: Do the Work. [00:28:04] Speaker A: No doubt, no doubt. And you know, in the most, you know, I want to, you know, make sure that I say this to every single guest. This is why I created the Tron podcast, was to talk to people like you. Because I would never have had the privilege to be able to talk to somebody like you and get your time without doing something like this. You know, a 30 year Air Force veteran with a lot of life to give and wants to share it with others. All the people that I've talked to all want to share this with others. You guys aren't closed off people, right? You're not like, oh, you know, I'm just gonna go ahead and have this little sand of time while I keep this all to myself. And you know, it's beautiful. You guys share it with people by. [00:28:38] Speaker B: Giving back is the title of the book is because of that, the sharing thing. The second thing, I'll tell you, Rashad, here's the deal. Stop saying thank you for your service and ask us our story. [00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You know, can I just leave with that? It's so, and this is somebody who didn't serve. I always try to make sure that I don't. You have to be careful, I'm guessing how to word it. You know, don't be, you know, don't be a movie. [00:29:01] Speaker B: All you have to do is say you served and then somebody's going to go, yes, and they're going to stand up straight because we're proud of that. And you're going to go, what's your story? And then strap it on. Then get ready, get ready to get ready to get a story. And sometimes people will go, I've been in for three months and I just got out of basic training. And my next. And you go, that's great, man, good luck. And sometimes you run into a guy like me and I'll say, how long do you got and what do you want to know? And, and, and, and when people have the time, they'll go through it. I had a guy, I was going to play golf the other day and there's, there's the traditional guy that signs you and takes your money and gets you, you know, gets you out, gets you out the door. Great guy. I've known him for a while and because of the political atmosphere with Ukraine and those kind of things, he said, you know, Dave, he goes, what's your opinion on this? And, and he said out loud, he goes, I grew up here. He goes, this is all I know. He's an older guy. He's older Than me, actually. He said, this is all I know. He says, I just haven't been out in the world. He goes, you've kind of touched all the corners. He goes, what do you think? And I said, jim, I'm going to answer your question, but you have to, first of all, you're going to have to keep a really open mind, and you're going to have to accept my answer because it's not going to be short. And I went through, you know, my perspective on things, what drives my perspective on things. [00:30:14] Speaker A: Right, right, right. [00:30:14] Speaker B: And when I finished, I actually apologized to him. I said, that's a lot, man. That's a lot to digest. And he goes. And he goes, no, I needed that. [00:30:21] Speaker A: Just to hear it. [00:30:22] Speaker B: And if people will listen to veterans, we will tell you, we're not going to give you the bloody. Some of us will go a little bit deeper than others. For my mental health, sometimes I share a little bit more than I. Some. Some would, but it's because that's how I tend to navigate that. But. But the stuff that you're going to get, some of it's going to be absolutely hilarious, and some of it is going to just be really solid nuggets of teaching that you can't get it. [00:30:47] Speaker A: I'll tell you a really quick snippet is. I'll never forget this. I was about 10 or 11 years old, and so I'm in Michigan, and I got. I took the dog outside, somehow locked myself out of the house. Both my parents were all. My older brother, like, it was just like one thing after the other. And I'm like, oh, man, this sucks. And, you know, I just had, like, a T shirt and shorts and, you know, little sweatshirt on. So I went to my neighbor across the street, and I didn't know he had served in World War II. I lived across this guy my entire life, and parents knew him. Well, open up the door. And I can't remember what branch of service was in, but all his stuff, it was like you literally walked in a museum and you, like. And I sat there till my parents got home, like two and a half hours later. He's talking about how he was stationed in the Philippines, and he was. And you're just like, you're a kid. I'm like, 11 years old, and I'm like, this is the most incredible story I've ever heard. He's like, I got in there when I was 20, you know, and he's talking about the food he ate, the places he met, the people that. And I'm like, I never knew. And to your point, like, it was just like, you could have made a Spielberg movie out of this moment. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Right? [00:31:45] Speaker A: Like, it was just. It was one of the greatest moments I ever had in my entire life. [00:31:49] Speaker B: Yeah. That's great. My fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Holmes, brought her husband to class to talk to us one time. And if you. If you know about World War II history, early in the war, there was a big. A big battle in the Coral Sea, a naval battle, and we lost an aircraft carrier, which was a USS Lexington. And he was on that. He was on that aircraft carrier. And he told us the whole story about the whole boat, the whole day. Yeah. And. And. And like I told you, something funny comes out of it. He had just gone through the galley to get lunch, and because under combat conditions, they serve cold food, they handed him a tuna fish sandwich and an apple. And then the ship got it. The ship got hit. And I. It's. It was so hilarious. He goes, I had this sandwich in this apple, and he thought, I might need this for later. Right? So put it in his. He put it in his shirt, went down the. Went down the. The netting on the ship, and then went into the water, and he goes, having a tuna fish sandwich in the Coral Sea strapped to your chest is not good when there's a million sharks around. [00:32:43] Speaker A: My God. So. [00:32:45] Speaker B: So I knew I made a bad decision. [00:32:47] Speaker A: In the midst of all that, he still remembered that humorous situation. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Yeah, man, that's. Yeah. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Well, you know, in the. In the absence of. Thank you for your service. I appreciate you telling your story and what you shared, you know, from this guy who's just trying to, you know, get inside of people's heads and learn some things on The Tron podcast. Mr. Dave Nordell, I cannot thank you enough. You've been a wonderful guest, and I would love to talk to you again soon. Anytime, brother. [00:33:11] Speaker B: Out here, man. [00:33:12] Speaker A: Bye.